Talk:Henry VIII of England
I just learned that Catherine actually produced a good number of sons, but they all died either before, during, or very shortly after birth. Thus, Grieving Parents. Turtle Fan 01:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC) :As did Anne Boleyn, actually. Was it just some of the inbreeding of the Tudor line, or did Henry have something else going on? TR 15:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC) ::Edward VI survived into adulthood, but barely, and he was always pretty frail. So there may well have been something wrong with Harry's Y-swimmers, using that as evidence. But hardly any genes are linked to the Y chromosome; congenital problems that afflict sons but not daughters, like hemophilia, come from the mother's defective X chromosome and the absence of a healthy gene to counter it from the father's genome. ::Also, of the bastard sons whom rumor connects to Henry, in one case at least rumor is known to be completely true. That son had a normal life span. Don't know what if anything became of his attempts to reproduce. ::It does seem awfully unlikely that multiple mothers would all exclusively produce unhealthy sons for the same father if nothing is wrong with the father. Maybe God really did hate Henry's marriages, as he himself (Henry that is) said, using Catherine's stillborn or sickly sons as evidence, when he suddenly decided that Leviticus 18:6 really did apply to him, and as Catholic Europe said about the subsequent unions. ::I'm still skeptical about a genetic connection at all but if there is it may well have been Tudor-wide. As far as I know Henry VII had only the two sons, and Arthur died very young, probably of natural causes. He (Henry VII) had two healthy daughters, though one died in her thirties. Turtle Fan 19:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC) :::It's probably one of those fascinating mysteries of history we just won't ever have THE answer to. TR 22:25, 1 December 2008 (UTC) ::::I suppose so. Turtle Fan 01:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC) Herehttp://tudors.crispen.org/Henry8_medical/index.html is a theory I stumbled upon in my travels that reminded me of our above discussions. The author contends that the low quality of Henry VIII's seed was a symptom of syphillis. Turtle Fan 22:34, 13 December 2008 (UTC) :Yes, I'd stumbled across that one as well. Thanks for the link. TR 03:40, 14 December 2008 (UTC) ::Any time. ::The theory had me intrigued. I hesitate to accept it because it would suggest that the premature death of Arthur Prince of Wales was just coincidence, which it may well have been, and ignores the facts that Elizabeth and Henry's known bastard son, while they may or may not have been sterile, lived long and reasonably healthy lives. Also problematic was the lack of a single dram of evidence that any of the wives were syphillitic--only the mother can infect a baby with congenital syphillis. The father can of course infect the mother, who can pass it on to the baby, but the mother must become infected. Catherine of Aragon in particular lived many years after Henry threw her out. I don't know how her health was during that time but I would have to imagine that if she had anything that could have been syphillitic symptoms, this article would have seized upon that to bolster the case. Turtle Fan 08:02, 14 December 2008 (UTC) Musical Career I know he was a very talented performer. I also know he wrote a few pieces himself. "Greensleeves" is perhaps the best known. Should we call him a composer? Turtle Fan 15:51, 6 January 2009 (UTC) :He actually didn't write "Greensleeves". That's an urban legend. :As for the actual category, let's just leave him in musicians for now. TR 16:25, 6 January 2009 (UTC) ::He didn't write "Greensleeves"? Well don't I have egg on my face. ::Yes, let's leave him be. Turtle Fan 16:46, 6 January 2009 (UTC) Cause of Death Gross obesity, you say? I think most modern medical experts would agree that contributed, but his cause of death has always been much speculated about. I always liked syphilis myself. That or the hand of a vengeful God--execute Silken Thomas for trying to free the Emerald Isle from your tyranny, will you! And that nice Thomas More, too. Anyway, obesity even now is a contributing factor but not a cause of death, I believe. Having it be the immediate cause might be fun to watch: "Oh my God, I'm fat!" *dies* Turtle Fan 23:48, 27 August 2009 (UTC) Earldom Did Henry VIII inherit the title of Earl of Richmond from Henry VII, or did it go extinct when the elder Henry became king? Turtle Fan 19:57, October 28, 2010 (UTC) :It became extinct/merged. TR 20:03, October 28, 2010 (UTC) ::Ah. I knew he'd made poor young Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond and Somerset. Now a king can promote an existing earldom to a dukedom, and a king can reinstate an extinct peerage at whatever level he wants. At least, he could back then: Elizabeth can't today, thanks to Blair's very popular semi-democratization of the House of Lords. Turtle Fan 23:29, October 28, 2010 (UTC) Religious Convert? If you had asked Henry, he would not say that he changed his religion. He would say he had altered his religion to suit him better. (Actually he would probably say something like "A king has always been the head of the church within his kingdom, it's just that some of us choose to defer to the Pope." The meaning would be the same.) Ask any Pope and he'd say Henry had indeed converted. Anglicanism didn't start adopting Protestant doctrines in a big way until the Elizabethan period, and didn't come to be widely considered a Protestant faith until the Stuart era, after even more doctrinal shifts. In the twentieth century, Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians and so on still regarded Anglicans (and by now Episcopileans) as pretty soft on much of what they considered the defining aspects of Protestant identity, whatever those were. Even today we talk about Catholicism Lite and so on, though that's much more tongue-in-cheek and follows several decades of Christian denominations emphasizing commonalities instead of differences. But I digress. With a few, usually very short-lived, exceptions, Henry's Church of England was nearly identical to the modern sect known as High Church Anglo-Catholicism: Identical to RCC but under the Anglican Communion instead of the Vatican. So calling Henry a convert is . . . a matter of opinion. Turtle Fan 17:37, March 31, 2011 (UTC) :Yeah, I was swaying back and forth on not just Henry, but Luther and Calvin as well. I think I'll take Henry out of converts. If we wanted to classify him as anything "Relgious Founder" might be closer to the mark, and even then, he founded a denomination, not a wholly new religion. TR 18:46, March 31, 2011 (UTC) ::Luther called his followers "a new communion organized outside the traditional church," when he wasn't using far more inflammatory language. Calvin didn't use that phrase but he thought along those lines. Henry, though, believed he was still Catholic and held stake-burnings for those who either told him he wasn't or encouraged him to become less so. Of course, Catholicism is a centralized religion, so it's generally considered to be the province of the hierarchy to decide what--and who--is Catholic and what is not, and they excommunicated him. ::I called for a category for Luther, Calvin, and Henry a while back. Don't know what we'd call it; Christian Reformers, perhaps? I think Luther and Calvin could certainly count as founders of a new religion, along with Mohammed and Buddha and Jesus and Moses. Turtle Fan 21:20, March 31, 2011 (UTC) :::There's also Samuel Jones (Atlantis). Do we have any other fictional founders? TR 21:45, March 31, 2011 (UTC) ::::Henri (In High Places). Who, by the way, should definitely be moved to "Henri (In High Places)." In fact I think I'll do that right now. Turtle Fan 22:14, March 31, 2011 (UTC) Polygamists Why? You may think his divorce invalid and so he was married to multiple women at the same time but I don't think that makes him a polygamists. ML4E (talk) 19:36, October 29, 2015 (UTC) :Indeed. The annulment was valid. Yes, he effectively created the law to make it valid, but the marriage to Catherine of Aragon was legally ended. Anne was executed, Catherine Howard was executed, Jane Seymour died, and Anne of Cleves was also properly annuled. TR (talk) 19:59, October 29, 2015 (UTC) ::While Mary I generally wanted nothing to do with the Act of Supremacy, she took advantage of the fact that it was still on the books when she succeeded to overturn the original annulment. Anyone claiming she did not have the right to do so would have also had to concede that Henry never had the right to issue it, or to demand it of Cranmer. Either way, that marriage was validated. And no subsequent monarch has reinstated the annulment, so Mary's overturn still stands. I still think calling him a polygamist is a stretch, however, especially since Catherine's supporters never recognized the second marriage and insisted Anne was merely an elevated mistress. ::By the way, the second and fifth marriages were also annulled. As far as Henry was concerned, his only real wives were Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:37, October 29, 2015 (UTC) Henry married Anne Boleyn before having his marriage to Catherine annulled.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:09, October 30, 2015 (UTC) :Not so, he married Anne five days after the annulment. Anne was already in the second trimester of her pregnancy at the time, so their consummation predates the annulment. One could argue that, as Elizabeth was conceived out of wedlock, she should not have succeeded even if her parents' marriage was valid. Turtle Fan (talk) 14:12, October 30, 2015 (UTC) ::All the sources I consulted say that Henry secretly married Anne in January 1533, and he had Cranmer pronounce the marriage to Catherine invalid on May 28. There may be another official story out there, but the one that seems to be most widely reported is this one that has Henry's marriages overlap by four months.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 21:35, October 30, 2015 (UTC) ::: I see Henry is still cat'ed as a polygamist. Is Jonathan's argument convincing or not? Personally, I think it is insufficient. Also, we have Henry double cat'ed as Anglican and Protestant. Is there a reason for this or was the removal of Protestant overlooked when the Anglican cat was added? ML4E (talk) 18:36, May 29, 2017 (UTC) ::::From what I can tell, it actually comes down to legalisms and semantics. Since Henry did indeed marry Anne while still married to Catherine. But since the marriage to Catherine was annulled, which legally means that there never was a marriage. Thus, legally speaking, Henry was not married when he married Anne, and therefore did not commit bigamy. Legally speaking. TR (talk) 18:51, May 29, 2017 (UTC) :::::I don't want to call him a bigamist, but I remind you that the annulment was later overturned and the first marriage reinstated, and remains so to this day. :::::As for Protestant and Anglican, Henry definitely did not see himself as Protestant, and continued to persecute those who held to Protestant doctrines after the Act of Supremacy. On all matters theological and liturgical, except apostolic succession, he was quite orthodox. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:13, May 29, 2017 (UTC) Delete Henry isn't referenced much in RB as I recall. Most of the points the section mentions are more about Elizabeth than Henry. The main theme of the H8 RB subsection is "After 1588, the English Reformation was rolled back by the Catholic Church." Only a really slow learner would not have figured out, from all the other RB info available, that that's the main conflict of the novel.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 07:19, July 25, 2016 (UTC) Bump. Henry is a little too far back in the past by the time of RB. The points about Elizabeth's religious policy cover everything we need to know.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 20:06, August 4, 2016 (UTC) :Henry looms over the story the way Mary does. TR (talk) 20:43, August 4, 2016 (UTC) :I think this one could go either way. I'd prefer to save him, though, if only because he's so much more fascinating than most of the other historical figures on the bubble. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:35, August 4, 2016 (UTC)